upgrading perl

[Paul Schmehl]

--On Thursday, December 30, 2004 7:54 PM -0800 Karl Agee 
<kdagee at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Freebsd 4.11-pre.  I am working on learning perl, and have perl 5.00x
> that is in the base system when I installed 4.10-Release.  Since most of
> the learning materials out there are based on later verisions esp since
> 5.6.x some of the features arent in this older version.
>
> I am considering upgrading to 5.8.5 via ports, but, dont know if that
> will break anything.
>
> Just being cautious...

It's good to be cautious. :-)

If you want to switch to the ports version of perl, then after you run make 
install clean in the port, you will need to do the following:

Type "use.perl ports" at the commandline.  This will switch perl from the 
system version to the ports version.  Until you do this, your system will 
still be using the system version.  Furthermore, you can always revert back 
to the system version by typing "use.perl system" at the commandline.

After you do that, you will need to run "make reinstall" in any port that 
you've installed that uses perl.

You can also install all the CPAN modules using the base system, so there's 
no need to upgrade to the ports version unless you just want to.  (I chose 
to do that on a server I maintain, but it worked fine using the system 
perl.)

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
The University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu